Sweeten up your Valentine’s Day with YEN PLUS!

Posted February 11, 2011 by

There are plenty of fish in the sea. Hopefully you’ve snagged your one true love and are looking forward to a wonderful Valentine’s Day! And by your one true love, I mean YEN PLUS magazine! Captain Aron and his crew of pirates(?) lead off a fleet of brand-new chapters from your favorite YEN series. Plus, we have a special short story from Gossip Girl artist HyeKyung Baek! (GG will be back next month!)

As always, we love to hear what you think! Please share your feedback here and enjoy this month’s issue of YEN PLUS magazine!!!

If they pick my submission, despite the fact that I’m still in school, I still think I have the capacity to produce a monthly series-type thing anyway… it just depends on what classes I choose, because I just have to pick ones taught by people that don’t care if I draw in class >w>

Rufino does have a point and I also agree too. I rarely found any OEL I actually like and follow. So I guess we were expected to draw at a Japanese Level in order to really make it to standard level. Wow this contest is becoming more and more complicated to me!! *sobs in a corner*

regardless high standards are not, if they like someone’s work they will send them a contract giving them a shot into the manga business. many great manga artists now in japan didn’t start with great drawings………..some are actually kind of crappy, no offense. (some are really crappy XD) from what i know is as long as you can draw something and come up with an awesome storyline you are set.

but i am sure the contract will state something like you have to sell a certain of copies or become popular within a time frame, then it’s for sure you will be drawing for a while.

if you fail to reach the goals (within a couple of months or maybe even a year) then you get fire or something. overall yenpress doesn’t lose much except paying you your monthly check/s (which is probably not a big deal), since their monthly manga is online now (not wasting paper and ink and shipping boxes).

If things didn’t work out:
=the artist might need to rethink about their career choice.
=yenpress loses the money they pay the artist their salary.
=yenpress might lose some more money if they printed the manga and no one buys it.

If things works out:
=the artist gets to keep their job and maybe this might be the beautiful beginning of being a manga artist.
=if the series gets popular both the artist and yenpress will earn a lot of $$$.
=series getting known is also a great way to advertise your company’s name in our case, yenpress.
=A NEW HOPE FOR OEL MANGA ARTISTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
=Now people in the U.S. and other countries will have a BETTER shot at being a manga artists.
=Maybe other companies might even start holding manga contests again.

About Japanese artists though, I’ve heard companies over there develop talent in the rough, by short stories etc, plus there are alot of weekly and monthly magazines in Nippon. They’re abit forced to develop talent because they can’t just rely on manga coming from Japan like the rest of the world, and most of the manga licenced in the world outside Japan already has somewhat of a following thanks to scans/fansubs so they really don’t have to go all out to advertise it, there’s where non-Japanese manga gets stuck, publishers don’t want to risk it, it’s a gamble. I like Yen cuz it has a monthly magazine, which is rare these days.
Hopefully the economy picks up again so more companies can take more risks

yeah, it’s really competitive in Japan to become a manga artist. Many new manga artists are featured in their weekly issues once and then disappear and never heard again. if you ever went to a Japanese bookstore in Japan there is SOOO MUCH manga artists/series/titles/style you never saw translated in America because it was just not popular enough or appealing enough. it’s because it’s such a big part of their culture in Japan they actually have 2 year prep colleges for being a manga artist.

like i said before it’s a super competitive industry in Japan as competitive as the entertainment business in Korea for the singers and actors. what’s funny they both have in common is that they do take in new artists and train them from step one to see if they got a shot in succeeding. even with it being so competitive some of the manga contains really crappy art. XD because for american comics (like DC & marvel) our artists are hired at a higher skill level than in japan.

yeah i do agree, fan-subs/scans plays a big part for the japanese mangas. i know for sure if it wasn’t for fan-subs/scans as a kid i would never got into manga/anime.